"May I come into the fairy country and sit awhile and visit?"
"Aye." She welcomed him to a hillock of green rising from the water's edge. "It is fairyland, and these are the broad seas around, and I know if I came here by night I should find the Good People before me!" She looked at him with friendliness, half shy, half frank. "It is the best of weather for wandering."
"Are you fond of that, too? Do you go up and down alone?"
"By my lee-lane when Gilian's not here. She's in Aberdeen now, where live our mother's folk."
"I have not seen you for years."
"I mind the last time. Your mother lay ill. One evening at sunset Mr. Ian Rullock and you came to White Farm."
"It must have been after sunset. It must have been dark."
"Back of that you and he came from Edinburgh one time. We were down by the wishing-green, Robin Greenlaw and Gilian and I and three or four other lads and lassies. Do you remember? Mr. Rullock would have us dance, and we all took hands—you, too—and went around the ash-tree as though it were a May-pole. We changed hands, one with another, and danced upon the green. Then you and he got upon your horses and rode away. He was riding the white mare Fatima. But oh," said Elspeth, "then came grandfather, who had seen us from the reaped field, and he blamed us sair and put no to our playing! He gave word to the minister, and Sunday the sermon dealt with the ill women of Scripture. Back of that—"
"Back of that—"
"There was the day the two of you would go to the Kelpie's Pool." Elspeth's eyes enlarged and darkened. "The next morn we heard—Jock Binning told us—that Mr. Ian had nearly drowned."